


just another dressed up heartbreak (turned his tears to diamonds in his crown)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: this whole damn city thinks it needs you (but not as much as I do) [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cameos by other evaks as other former Victors, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mentions of Blood, My Poor Boys, POV Robbe, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Sander and Robbe are Victors of the Hunger Games, Victors, WTFOCK HAS BEEN FUCKING WITH ME SO I FUCK WITH Y'ALL, but like it is the Hunger Games?, hunger games folds welcome to my skam AU, i'm back on my bullshit again, severely unbetad, so like there is some romance and fluff, so you know keep that in mind, this story is post-Games, welcome skam folks to my hunger games AUs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 15:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21530143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Ever since the rule change in the Third Quarter Quell, there are two Victors allowed in every Games, but only on two rules: that each of them have at least one kill under their belt, and that they’re from two different Districts.Some people see such a rule as mercy. Allowing you not to have to brain in the head of your final opponent, of being able to have someone who understands you, of the Capitol showing its mercy on the Districts by allowing yet another child to live.The old-school Victors certainly act that way. Robbe knows they resent the younger generation, and he gets it, honestly, even if he hates it. They got to bring someone out of the Arena. They have someone by their side who understands their specific Arena, someone who gets why they flinch at particular sounds or colors or substances.As for Robbe's, well, he has Sander Drisen. District One. Robbe’s lone ally in the Arena- and the boy he's in love with.(How to survive the Capitol when you're one half of a Victor pair.)
Relationships: Robbe Ijzermans/Sander Driesen
Series: this whole damn city thinks it needs you (but not as much as I do) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553239
Comments: 1
Kudos: 110
Collections: Skam Belgium (Wtfock) ▶ Sander Driesen / Robbe Ijzermans





	just another dressed up heartbreak (turned his tears to diamonds in his crown)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Prom Queen" by Molly Kate Kestner, my ultimate Hunger Games AU song.
> 
> I am being fucked around with by the writers of WTFock and therefore couldn't resist my natural urges to write an HG!AU for the fandom because why the fuck not?
> 
> Also I worked really fast to try and get it out before the next clip, so if it makes no sense, I'm sorry. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

_Come Hell or high water, we will rise above_

_You are what I believe in_

_You are enough_

_You taught me how to, you taught me how to love_

_Take all I cherish, beat me 'til my body's numb_

_But life's for the living, I won't be giving up o_ _n you_

**_-Billy Rafoul,_ Hell or High Water**

Ever since the rule change in the Third Quarter Quell, there are two Victors allowed in every Games, but only on two rules: that each of them have at least one kill under their belt, and that they’re from two different Districts.

Some people see such a rule as mercy. Allowing you not to have to brain in the head of your final opponent, of being able to have someone who understands you, of the Capitol showing its mercy on the Districts by allowing yet another child to live.

The old-school Victors certainly act that way. Robbe knows they resent the younger generation, and he gets it, honestly, even if he hates it. They got to bring someone out of the Arena. They have someone by their side who understands their specific Arena, someone who gets why they flinch at particular sounds or colors or substances.

As for Robbe's, well, he has Sander Drisen. District One. Robbe’s lone ally in the Arena, and it had been an accident, too- Robbe stumbling across Sander's camp in the morning of the third day, having just witnessed the death of the girl from Eight, who'd tripped into one of his traps and had gone down.

He and Sander had been allies from the third day on. Robbe, the sixteen-year-old boy with quick fingers and a quicker mind from Nine, and Sander, the eighteen-year-old volunteer from One with a skilled hand with a sword and a kind smile for the outlier who had stumbled onto his camp after somehow murdering a Career.

Sander had called him a “space oddity,” that first night of their alliance, and Robbe had had to ask him what that was. Sander had spent the rest of that night explaining to him about the music of the Capitol musician David Bowie, making Robbe actually smile for the first time since he’d been Reaped over Sander’s attempt at singing “Under Pressure.”

From that night on, they'd made a pact to survive the Games together. To make it out. And they'd done it. They'd won.

(Later, at their interview, the Gamemakers hadn’t included any clips from their conversation that night. Robbe never really thought much as to the why, then, and it’s only far, far later that he realizes that he should have.)

-

At first the two of them aren't that close. They share an apartment, just as all of the Partner-Victors do, all the way from the first in Isak Valterson and Even Bech Næsheim to the most recent in Matteo Florenzi and David Schreibner. The Capitol posits it as a sign of inter-District unity, of camaraderie and friendship.

(Robbe thinks that it's just another way of controlling them. Of making them share space with their guilt, of getting stuck in the same apartment with someone who wakes up screaming from the same mutts as them, of knowing that you're going to be trapped with the one person who knows your murderous ways better than anyone else.)

Robbe and Sander are awkward, stilted around each other in a way that they hadn't been in the Arena, working to fight for their lives. Their easy banter from then feels a bit off, just like Sander feels a bit off, and Robbe's not exactly sure what to do other than just continue to share the same apartment as Sander, go to the same interviews as Sander, get used to hearing Sander's nightmares from the room across the hallway.

-

And then comes the Victory Tour, and everything changes.

-

When they give those speeches at every District during their Victory Tour, Robbe can feel the resentment boiling in some of the Districts. The fact that two children were allowed to live, and that it wasn’t their Districts. It was the pretty white-haired boy from One and the thin boy from Nine who were allowed to live, who were crowned and who were dressed up in the Capitol’s prettiest clothes.

 _I didn’t want this_ , Robbe wants to scream. _I didn’t want to be a killer, to have my friends stare at me like they don’t know me, to be stuck with a boy I love and hate in equal measure, to have blood rip through every dream and stain every nightmare and-_

But he doesn’t say a word, instead just reciting the speeches that Chloe, his escort, gives them, guilt burning in his chest, thinking of Sander to ground himself. Beside him Sander stands stiff in dark clothing, looking like the killer that Robbe knows he is but so rarely sees him as.

-

Sander kisses him one night in the middle of the Victory Tour, in the rain pouring down on a bridge in Ten, and Robbe’s world suddenly turns on its head.

Sander’s eyes are bright and somehow sad when he says, “I just wanted to try that, the once. Before we got back to the Capitol.”

He starts to walk away and Robbe reaches forward and grabs his hand. Grabs both of his hands, more like, anchors him to this spot on this bridge. “Stay,” he says, and Sander raises an eyebrow.

“Stay?”

Robbe nods his head, a million thoughts rushing through his brain. The sight of Sander at the end of the Games, blood on his cheek and threatening to flood through the bandage that Robbe had so carefully wrapped around his torso. The way Sander had smiled at him right before their Victory Interview, giving him a reassuring nod. The way that he'd promised Robbe that they'd make it through this, that they'd survive.

So Robbe leans up on his toes just a little and kisses Sander and for a moment- for the first moment since the Games ended- he is happy, because Sander smiles, leans in, cups Robbe's cheeks with his hands, and kisses him back, and in this moment they are not killers but just boys, seeking a refuge in each other during the worst moments of their life.

-

They inch closer and closer to the Capitol and to the Presidential gala and back to that apartment that they split in the Capitol. The Victors since the Partner-Victor rule have all ended up living in the Capitol, under the watchful eyes of the President and the Gamemakers in apartments that they split with their Partner-Victor from the same Games.

Robbe watches the country pass by from the windows of the train, from the stages where he and Sander give speeches about tribute deaths that plague their nightmares every night, and he thinks about crumpling to his knees after he and Sander had killed the boy from Three, their last kill, and pressing his hands to the bandages around Sander's torso so that the boy from Three would bleed out first and so that he and Sander could live, because he wasn't sure if the Capitol would have even kept the two-Victor thing if Sander was too wounded and Robbe _needed_ Sander to live.

-

Robbe’s talent for the Capitol is piano, which he isn’t half bad at. Sander’s talent for the Capitol, on the other hand, is photography, and everything he makes is fucking beautiful. He takes photos of everywhere they go for films that he’s making for the Capitol, and they all turn out spectacular in a way that Robbe could never do with something artistic.

One night, when they’re both curled up in bed together on the train, Sander takes a photo of Robbe.

“What was that for?” Robbe asks, and Sander smiles, one corner of his lips turning upward.

“I wanted something beautiful on my camera,” Sander says with a small smile, and Robbe can't resist leaning up and snatching a kiss from Sander, who gladly reciprocates.

They tumble back together, as they do so often, and Robbe wishes that these moments were all that he had to do with. That there weren’t speeches and nightmares and escorts to deal with. That the rest of their lives could be just them, in this bed.

But the most they can get is being able to sleep together, to make out and have sex and talk.

They sleep together without having sex some nights, just curled up together for warmth and comfort, Robbe’s back against Sander’s chest, Sander’s head tucked on Robbe’s.

It’s in these quiet moments that Robbe can almost forget the Games, forget how he crafted traps that killed the girl from Eight, boy from Three, and the boy from Two, forget what blood looked like on his fingers, forget the sight of Sander after his fight with the girl from Two, who’d nearly killed him with a cut from her sword across his stomach as he killed her. In these moments, curled up in Sander’s arms, Robbe almost forgets all of those nightmares, instead savoring the fresh smell of Sander, the warmth of Sander’s hugs, the whisper of his voice against Robbe’s ear.

-

When they get back to their now permanent apartment in the Capitol, Sander disappears at strange times. He used to do that a lot before their Victory Tour, Robbe is now realizing, but he hadn’t really noticed it then due to their separate rooms. He notices it a lot more now that they’re together, though, that half of the nights Sander either won’t come to the bed until the morning or that sometimes he'll just disappear in the middle of the night.

They smoke together, eat together every day. Sander will sometimes make sandwiches and feed them to Robbe and Robbe will bring him home ingredients and watch movies with him and it’s the possibly the safest Robbe’s felt since he was a young, young kid and-

Robbe’s still worried. He still doesn’t know what’s going on with Sander. He doesn’t know why Sander keeps disappearing in the middle of the night. He doesn't know what's bringing Sander home with dark bags under his eyes until their prep teams adjust him.

(Robbe doesn’t ask, though. He thinks he’s almost scared to. Who knows what Sander might be getting up in the Capitol?)

-

And then Robbe catches sight of Sander kissing a Capitolite at one of the parties they're required to go to, and his blood goes cold, a knife going through his heart just as assuredly as he and Sander had killed those tributes.

Was what they had on the Tour not what Sander wants? Was it just a coincidence of circumstance, two killers colliding for a moment of comfort? Was it nothing more than just Sander craving physical touch?

Is Robbe too damaged for Sander? Does Sander not want the broken District boy with nothing to give him but himself, but instead some Capitolite woman who can provide for his every whim?

He hadn't thought that Sander was driven by shit like that. He hadn't thought that the reason Sander had wanted to win the Games was just to gain the rewards of being a Victor, the glory and the fame and the money and the sex.

But maybe he'd judged him wrong. Maybe Robbe had crafted some sort of image in his head of Sander based on a few moments of vulnerability in the Games and warped his view of the killer Career into something that he wasn’t. Maybe he’s just been as sucked in by Sander’s charms and pretty words as everyone else has.

Robbe stumbles out of the banquet and into the bathroom, where he collapses against the wall, sliding down to the floor. There are sobs threatening to escape his throat because how in the fucking world could he have been this stupid? How could he have fucked this up so badly? How could he have believed in Sander, in the boy from One with the pretty smile and the wicked hand with a sword?

The door opens and in walks Milan Hendrickx, the last Victor from before the partner-Victor rule was set in place, the last Victor from Nine. Robbe’s own Mentor in the Games, who he’s only seen a few times since the Games ended. His expression shifts immediately when he sees Robbe on the ground, and he crouches down next to Robbe, unconcerned about the state of the pristine pink and white suit his stylist (or maybe him, as his talent _is_ fashion design) stuck him in.

“What’s going on, Robbe?” Milan asks quietly.

“Sander- he-” Robbe can barely get words past the lump in his throat. “He was kissing a Capitolite. When we- when we’re together. A thing, the two of us.”

Milan’s eyes go wide for a moment, taking in the information, before softening back. "Listen, Robbe," he says, “What’s going on with Sander- it's not what you think it is."

"Then what the fuck is it, then?" Robbe asks, trying not to cry. The boy he'd fallen in love with, the boy he shares a bed with, the boy he nursed to health in the Arena, was just making out with a Capitolite woman. "It's not him cheating on me with some Capitolite?"

Milan’s look is sympathetic and a bit pitying. "I’m not going to tell you what’s happening with him,” he says, “You have to ask him yourself. You have to give him time to tell you himself.”

“Just trust him?”

Milan’s smile is something sad and sympathetic. “He’s just surviving this second Arena that we’re all stuck in.”

Robbe’s heart leaps into his throat and he has to swallow to force it back down. “Is he safe, though?” he asks, and Milan purses his lips, something flickering in his eyes.

“As safe as he can be,” he says, and Robbe’s world is defined by almosts, now that he’s escaped the Arena, now that he's had his heart shattered by the boy who held him so close on the train and in their apartment.

-

Robbe has to trust Sander. Has to believe that what happened with that Capitolite was not a betrayal of what they have. Has to believe that the Sander he saw in those rare peaceful moments in the Games, on the train during the Tour, in their apartment- that was the actual Sander. 

(That Milan wasn’t lying to him.)

And for a few weeks, it works. Sander is as kind and loving to him as always, as if he wasn't kissing that Capitolite woman, as if his and Robbe's only roles in the Capitol are to give the occasional interview or presentation of their talent, getting to spend the rest of their time living casually in their apartment.

(It almost fools Robbe. Key word, _almost_.)

But then, one night, Sander takes Robbe out on a date. Or, at least, as close as a date as they're going to get in the Capitol- Sander takes Robbe out to the penthouse suite of a Capitol hotel, complete with a giant pool.

"Used the winnings to rent it for the night," Sander says, smile bright, eyes warm. "Might as well use them for something beautiful for you, right?"

And even as a smile breaks across Robbe's face because here is _his_ Sander, who held him through nightmares and kissed him and saved his life, Robbe has to swallow, wondering where that Sander's been for the last few months. Where his Sander went, in the lights of the Capitol and the press of that woman's lips.

For a few hours, though, Sander helps Robbe forget. They go skinny dipping in the pool, smoke, and hang out like their world is not one crafted of blood and Capitolite crystal.

"I love you," Sander says between kisses, and Robbe wants this more than anything. He wants to love the boy who saved his life and who he saved in return, the boy he emerged from the Arena with, bloodied and bruised and fucking _alive._

"I love you, too," Robbe responds, and they go back to kissing, to making out lazily on the bed in the suite.

Then, what feels like minutes later, Sander's comm vibrates, and he rolls over fast to check it, lips abandoning Robbe's. Robbe looks up, brow furrowing, to find Sander's face going pale, whiter than the stones of the President's mansion. "I've gotta go-" he says, and within seconds he's gone, leaving Robbe there alone, half-naked and _so scared_ of what possibly have made a Victor that afraid that quickly.

Robbe scrambles up after a few seconds of stunned silence and grabs his own comm, typing out a message to their escorts, practically begging one of them to come and get him a ride, to explain what happened, because he's terrified for Sander after that reaction and he doesn't know what to do anymore.

It’s Sander's escort, Britt, who finally breaks the news, as she comes to collect Robbe from the hotel.

"What just happened?" Robbe asks, voice close to breaking, because he doesn't know what's going on, why Sander left him like this, why the whole world went mad the moment his name got Reaped back in Nine and it hasn’t stopped being mad since.

“He’s a fucking whore, alright?” Britt shouts, and Robbe’s stomach drops to the ground, the blood draining from his face.

“What?” he croaks.

“He’s a whore. Half of the Victors are. From every pair of Victors since the rule change they’ve picked a Victor and turned them into a whore for the Capitol, using their families or the other Victor as collateral.”

Robbe’s blood turns to ice in his veins. “Please tell me-”

“It’s you,” Britt says, firing the shot point-blank into Robbe’s chest. “Sander doesn’t have anyone else to use to blackmail him with. His feelings for you gave the Capitol that bargaining chip, and they’re using it to make him their whore.”

Robbe feels like a sob threatening to tear its way out of his throat as he thinks about it, thinks hard enough to realize what’s been happening. What Sander’s been doing to keep him safe, even after they survived the Games. What him kissing that Capitolite woman meant.

"But- we just got together over the Victory Tour," Robbe says, "Why was he disappearing before then?"

Britt's expression is contemptuous. “You must really be an idiot if you don’t realize that he was doing this before you even got together. Just to protect you.” She sniffs as the breath rips from Robbe’s lungs. “No idea why he did it for your stupid ass.”

From before they even got together- Sander let himself become the Capitol’s whore to save Robbe before he’d even kissed him? Before they were anything more than just two allies who’d survived the Games together?

Robbe lets out a small gasp of breath, almost like he's been punched in the chest, and it kind of feels like he has, because Sander's body has been used to protect _him_. Sander's soft smile and lips and his body- they've all been turned into tools by the Capitol.

Robbe had almost gotten used to the idea of their bodies getting turned into weapons, to the idea of them as the Capitol's prized killers. This, though- Sander's body as Capitol property, to be used however Capitolites want it, as a fucktoy- this is beyond anything he'd ever thought of.

Britt sighs. "This car will get you back to your apartment. I suggest that you have a long conversation with him, work this shit out. I can't have my Victor's partner breaking down just because of some little romantic issues."

Little romantic issues? This is Sander being forced into being fucked by Capitolites because he managed to survive the Hunger Games and bring his own personal blackmail material with him. This is far more than just a relationship drama.

(Falling in love with your fellow Victor is only a fucking tragedy, in the end, especially if you’re from different Districts. Especially if you saw you’re being used as collateral to turn them into a whore. Especially if the boy you love is being hurt because of _you_.)

-

Robbe steps back from Sander. Tries to distance himself. Tries to somehow build some sort of emotional barrier that will allow Sander not to be blackmailed in his name.

The only way to release Sander from this is to let him go, right? That’s what can keep him safe, after all. Not having emotional blackmail on Sander is what will decrease the amount of fucking he has to do. Not being close to Sander will make things better for him.

(Robbe doesn't know. He's clutching at straws, trying to pull another miracle like the one he did in the Arena, the bandages given by a sponsor that had arrived just in time to bandage Sander up and keep the wound in his stomach from draining him of all blood.)

“That doesn’t work,” Milan says when he sees Robbe at the mandatory Viewing party for the Reaping. 

“What doesn’t work?” Robbe asks, looking across the room at Sander, who’s sitting with a couple of Capitolites. Something sour threatens to drown Robbe, something bloody staining his mind and guilt growing bitter in his stomach.

“Separating yourself from him. You’re just making it hurt worse.”

“And how would you know?” Robbe spits at him, “You’re from before the partners. You don't know what it's fucking like to be the reason someone else gets hurt."

“Just because I won alone doesn’t mean I don’t have people I care about,” Milan says, glancing sideways at someone, and some other time when Sander wasn’t the first thing on Robbe’s mind, he might have been sympathetic. He might have cared.

But this time, instead, he just looks frontward, to the screens showing the Reaping results from around the country, trying not to second-guess himself. Trying not to regret separating himself from the boy he loves in what may have been just some misguided attempt at protecting him.

-

A week later, Robbe enters their bedroom to find Sander standing and leaning against the balcony.

“Do you want to leave me?” Sander asks, his eyes far too bright, suspiciously bright, and Robbe looks down to Sander's practiced hands, which are shaking just a little at his sides- a rare occurrence. The pain is clear in his voice when he says: "Because if you want to, we don't have to be together, if I'm making you uncomfortable or something."

Robbe looks at Sander, at this boy he loves, at the boy who killed his own District partner in order to get Robbe out alive. At this boy who’s turned over his body in order to keep Robbe safe. At this boy who Robbe wants nothing more than to be happy.

“You’d be happier without me,” he says, hand clenching into a fist behind his back. “Without having to give your body over to the Capitol.”

Sander's face slackens, some kind of tension finally releasing in his features, and he lets out a low snort. “You think I’d be happier without you?” His voice cracks as he says: “Robbe, you’re the only thing that keeps me sane.”

“But I’m the reason you’re in there,” Robbe says, “You’re in there because I’m not.”

“And I won’t let them take you,” Sander says, eyes flashing, and there's a hint of the boy who killed four kids in order to win the Games, the boy who left the Career pack and then helped Robbe kill them off, one by one, the boy who nearly died but _didn't_ because Robbe begged him to keep breathing, to live past the last dying gasps of the girl from Two. “I can handle it. I can take it.”

“And I can’t?” Robbe asks, voice as stone-cold as it has to be. He hates seeing Sander hurt, hates remembering his own hands shakily bandaging Sander's stomach so that he could live.

Sander's gaze is as steady as it's always been. “You’re the only reason I’m alive,” Sander says, “You saved me in those Games. Now, I'm saving you." Then, somehow, his voice cracks, shaking as he says: "I can't lose you, Robbe. Please just- please just let me do this." Robbe can see the tears starting to well up in Sander's eyes. "Please just let me keep you safe."

"But you're breaking, and it's my fault," Robbe says, heart shattering.

Sander reaches forward in an aborted motion that halts before his hand raises even to the height of his waist. "I'm not breaking," Sander says, as if that somehow erases months of him falling into Capitolite beds to protect Robbe. "I'm surviving. Again. Just like we did in the Arena. And you and I protected each other then, kept each other safe. Let me keep doing that now."

"Only if I can keep you safe, too," Robbe says, feeling as fragile as Sander's voice. "You're not alone in this. We're going to survive this together."

Robbe darts forward, pulling Sander into a deep, desperate kiss that ends up with them tumbling back on the bed together, Sander curling into Robbe's arms with half a sob. Robbe holds him, letting Sander curl his head into Robbe's chest, letting him let out a harsh half-sob, half-gasp. Robbe's hands go to Sander's hair, cradling him close, and his heart is breaking as he does so but he's accomplishing what he needs to: letting Sander know that he's here for him. That he can't change things, now, no matter how much he may want to, but that he's here for Sander in the meantime. That he's going to be whatever Sander needs to stay sane. That he loves Sander too much to let him shatter.

-

So Sander still has to leave at night, but Robbe is there when he gets back, to run his fingers through his hair and hold him close and cook a comforting meal. He's there when Sander has his first visible breakdown after an appointment, when the prep team erases the physical bruises but not the mental scars, when Sander needs to be supported in a way that he didn't let Robbe do in the months before.

Robbe sees the horrors that Sander's been going through without telling him, and his heart aches. He doesn't want Sander to have to suffer like this, to be forced into these Capitolites' beds, so he tries to give Sander as much of the love as possible that these Capitolites certainly aren't giving him, tries to somehow make up for what he's going through even while knowing that he could never, ever make up for everything that's been stolen from him by the Capitol.

And for the most part, it works. Sander seems to smiling a bit more easily, having more fun when it's just the two of them, joking around with his camera and the piano that should have been for Robbe's talent but that Sander seems to be having more fun trying out increasingly insane duets with Robbe on.

For awhile, this is how they love- Robbe supporting Sander and Sander protecting Robbe and both of them trying not to think about Sander's appointments whenever they're in their apartment, just the two of them, having as romantic and happy of times as they can with the shadow of the Capitol weighing on their backs.

-

When it comes to the 81st Games, Sander is gone for nearly the entire thing, with Robbe seeing glimpses along the way, catching them in gossip updates on television and the very occasional trip home.

He's not the only Victor gone, though- there are an easily countable and visible set of Victors missing from sponsor dealings and shit, if you know what you're looking for. (And Robbe, sick to his stomach, definitely does.)

For the 75th Hunger Games, it's Even Bech Næsheim, from District Eight. For the 76th, it's Nico Fares from District Four. For the 77th, it's Eliott Demaury, from District Ten. For the 78th, it's Joana Bianchi, from District Two. For the 79th, it's David Schreibner (as every Victor calls him, even if the Capitol refuses to do so), from District Six.

And for the 80th- it's Sander Driesen, from District One. Robbe's partner in Victory and in love, in murder and life.

From what Robbe can tell, every single one of the Partner-Victors left in the sponsor room or the mentor room know exactly what's going on. From the way they try to give their partners reassuring touches whenever they see them, to the way their eyes trace their partners whenever they're in a room, to the way they all flinch whenever a gossip broadcast is shown of a Capitol party where their partners are currently caught flirting with Capitolites.

(One last point of horror that the Capitol hammers in with the existence of Partner-Victors- the knowledge that your partner will never be free from the Capitol. That their bodies are what are being used to keep you safe.)

"You just have to be there for them," Martino from Twelve says, voice hushed as a news story of Sander and his newest "girlfriend," the daughter of the Minister of Finance, comes onscreen next to updates about the Games. Sander's lips against that woman's parallel the throat of the boy from Martino's District getting slit in the throat, and Robbe can't help but think about the final kill of his and Sander's Games, the kill that let them survive but led to them being trapped in this fucking situation. "When he comes home tonight, take care of him."

"I know," Robbe says, trying not to let his voice shake, "I know."

From across the room, at the Mentors' desk for Ten's only tribute still in this year's Games, Milan gives Robbe a sympathetic glance, one that Robbe wishes he could share with Sander, wherever he is.

-

After Martino's girl Shay and some other girl from District Two take home the crown, they all sit there in the crowd at the Victory Interviews, all of the Victors in neat rows in the audience.

Robbe links Sander's hand in his between their seats, below the viewline of the camera, and he squeezes Sander's fingers reassuringly. "The Games are over," he says even as he think _they'll never be over. Not for us. Not with the second Arena._

"Until next year," Sander says, something pinched about his smile, and Robbe swallows back tears because he doesn't want this to keep happening to Sander, doesn't want Sander to keep being forced into the beds of Capitolites, doesn't want Sander to be anything but happy- a distant and naive dream.

Afterwards, they end up in their apartment, where Sander drops down onto their bed, hands shaking on his knees, staring at the ground like he wants it to just swallow him up.

"I just want the thoughts to stop," he chokes out, and Robbe is there, holding him close, clinging to him as he stares at the wall. "I just want it all to fucking _stop_."

"I'm here," Robbe says, and that's all he _can_ say as he watches Sander crumble before him. "I'm here, you're not alone, I promise."

"How much longer?" Sander asks, and Robbe has no idea if he's asking how long Robbe will be there or how long he'll have to put up with all of this. 

There's a hollow pit in his stomach as he realizes that the answer to both questions is the same: _until the day we all die._

-

"Listen," Isak- one of the two Victors of the 75th Games, the most recent Victor from District Seven- says, "We can't talk long up here, but Cris developed a way to prevent the cameras from working up here for about five minutes. Some kind of signal interruption. So I'm going to need you to listen, because I know this is a longshot. I don't know if we can pull this off."

"Pull what off?" Robbe asks, confused as to why Isak's pulled him up onto his apartment roof to talk without the cameras on, just a few weeks after the Games ended.

"Even's been collecting information from Capitolites for years when he's stuck in their beds," Isak says, "And he heard whispers about something. About a possible way out."

A way out? As in for Sander, for Even, for every single one of them trapped inside of this second Arena that none of them realized they were trapping themselves inside? A way to keep Sander from collapsing in on himself? A way to save Sander?

Well, sign Robbe up. He has so little to lose and everything to possibly gain. "Tell me more," Robbe says, thinking of the boy currently trapped in the bed of some Capitolite.

Isak nods. "There's going to be a revolution," he says, no preamble. 

Robbe's face goes slack. "A revolution?"

Isak's lips turn just slightly upward as he looks into the rising sun in the east. "Robbe," he says, "Have you ever heard of District 13?"


End file.
